Manual:Glossary

Note: While the definitions below may be useful for understanding and communicating on project namespace and discussion pages, remember to explain jargon in manuals and MediaWiki software documentation, and write them in language which is readily understandable without specific knowledge of the MediaWiki software.

Do not overdo the use of MediaWiki or Wikipedia jargon, at least not without providing explanatory links to the appropriate pages.

Abbreviation for "anonymous user". As a user does not necessarily lose his or her anonymity by registering or logging in, this term should be avoided. See IP user.

Analytics

Archive

A subpage of a Talk page to which some parts of the discussion are transferred, to reduce the size of the Talk page. Rarely, the term may refer to the an historical archive page, for outdated historical material related to MediaWiki.

B/c, or backwards compatibility, is the ability of new code to not cause problems with the functioning of old code.

Ban

Banning is the extreme, last resort action by which someone is prevented from editing a wiki for a certain length of time, limited or unlimited. Banned users are not necessarily blocked, however, it is one mechanism to enforce a ban. See also: Block.

Beta cluster

Beta rollout

Enhancements to the Vectorskin and page editing made in 2010 as part of a usability initiative.

Bits

Block

Action by an administrator, removing from a certain IP address or username the ability to edit a wiki. Usually done against addresses that have engaged in vandalism or against users who have been banned. See also: Ban.

Blue link, bluelink

A wikilink to an article that already exists shows up blue (or purple if it has been recently visited by that reader/editor). See alsoSea of blue, and red link.

Sometimes assumed to be a secretive organization responsible for the development of Wikipedia, the word is usually used as a sarcastic hint to lighten up when discussions seem to become a little too paranoid. Discussions involving the term may have links to admin problems or pretty much anything to do with the foundation of Wikipedia. The term TINC ("There Is No Cabal") is occasionally encountered, used humorously in such a way as to suggest that maybe there is a cabal after all. The term is comparable to the use of the term w:SMOF in science fiction fandom. Compare Troll. See also m:Cabal, w:There Is No Cabal.

CamelCase

CamelCase (camel case or camel-case)—originally known as medial capitals—is the practice of writing compound words or phrases in which the elements are joined without spaces, with each element's initial letter capitalized within the compound and the first letter is either upper or lower case—as in "LaBelle", BackColor, "McDonald's" or "iPod".

Canvassing

Canvassing is sending messages to multiple Wikimedians with the intent to inform them about a community discussion. Under certain conditions, canvassing is acceptable to notify other editors of ongoing discussions (see Friendly messages), but inappropriate messages, written to influence the outcome rather than to improve the quality of a discussion, are considered disruptive since they compromise the consensus building process.

Cat, cat.

"Category" or "categorize". Often pluralized as "cats" or "cats."

Category

A category is a collection of pages automatically formed by MediaWiki by analyzing category tags in articles. Category tags are in the form Category:Extensions. The part after the ":" is the name of the Category. Adding a category tag causes a link to the category and any super-categories to go to the bottom of the page. As stated, it also results in the page being added to the category listing.

Category declaration

A category name placed at the bottom of any page. Pages are made members of categories by the use of the category declarations. Some people refer to category declarations as category tags. A category declaration looks like [[category:foo bar]] where foo bar is the title of the category page.

The process of repairing articles that contain errors of grammar, are poorly formatted, or contain irrelevant material. Cleanup generally requires only editing skills, as opposed to the specialized knowledge that is more often called for by pages needing attention.

Climbing the Reichstag

A humorous way of indicating that someone has over-reacted during an argument such as an edit-war in order to gain some advantage.

cmt

Comment.

Comment out

To hide from normal display whilst retaining the material for editors to see. This is done by inserting the characters <!-- at the start of the comment text and --> at the end. These character strings are used to delimit comments in HTML code.

Commons

Wikimedia Commons is an online repository of free-use images, sound and other media files. It is integrated into MediaWiki wikis through the use of InstantCommons.

Consensus

The mechanism by which many (but not all) decisions within Wikimedia Foundation projects are nominally made. Not the same as a "majority vote".

Contribs, contributions

Short for contributions. A user has made these edits.

Contributor

Users submitting content to a wiki.

Cookie licking

Starting work on a task, or assigning it to oneself, and thereby deterring others from working on it; but not following up.

Copyedit

A change to a page that only affects formatting, grammar, and other presentational aspects.

Moving a page by taking the text of the page, and putting it into the edit window for the second page. Generally considered worse than the 'move page' option, because it splits the page and its edit history. Cut and paste moves can be fixed by administrators.

Usually capitalized. A user who can make direct changes to Wikipedia's underlying software and possibly also the database, often being one of the MediaWiki developers (see next definition) or other Wikimedia Foundation technicians.

Usually not capitalized. One of the developers of the MediaWiki software; often but not always a Wikipedia Developer (in the above sense).

The difference between two versions of page, as displayed using the Page history feature, or from Recent Changes. The versions to compare are encoded in the URL, so you can make a link by copying and pasting it – for instance when discussing a change on an article's talk page.

Double redirect

A redirect which leads to another redirect. Counterintuitively, this will not bring one to the final destination, so it needs to be eliminated by linking directly to the target redirect. Double redirects are generated when moving a page that has redirects leading to it. See also Repoint.

Dummy edit

An edit made with no change in it, to reload the page cache. That function is not that much used since all caching options have been re-enforced.

Dupe

Short for a duplicate article. Often used when identifying a duplicate page that needs to be merged with another.

Also, rarely "edconf". Appears if an edit is made to the page between when one opens it for editing and completes the edit. The later edit does not take effect, but the editor is prompted to merge their edit with the earlier one. Usually no edit conflicts are thrown when your edit is in conflict with an own edit.

The contents of the "Summary:" field below the edit box on the "Edit this page" page.

Enterprise wikis

Third-party wikis meant to be used in a corporate (or organizational) context with a focus on enhancing internal knowledge sharing and a greater emphasis on features like access control, integration with other software, and document management.[1]See also:Enterprise hub

Extensions

Extensions let you customize how MediaWiki looks and works. Only someone with administration access to the filesystem on a server can install extensions for MediaWiki, but anyone can check which extensions are active on an instance of MediaWiki by accessing the Special:Version article. See also:Manual:Extensions

External link, ext. ln., extlink, ext lk, EL, etc.

A link to a website not owned by Wikimedia. The alternatives are an internal link, wikilink or free link within Wikipedia, and an interwiki link to a sister project.

To add coding to a template, image, or other feature so that it appears in a specific position on the page.

Foo

A placeholder name, used to provide a generic example. Thus, "an article on the culture of Foo", means "an article on the culture of any of the places under discussion, or any that it may also apply to". When two placeholders are required, Bar is usually used as the second (e.g., "an article on the Foo of Bar").

fmt

Format. Abbreviation commonly used in edit summaries to signify formatting of the page, or wikification.

Free link

A link pointing to another page within this wiki or its sister projects by using the wiki markup double square-brackets "[[" and "]]". Sometimes they are referred to as wikilinks or internal links. Unless otherwise specified in a user's monobook.css, these links usually show up as blue if they are working and you haven't visited them before, red if they are broken, and purple if they are working and you have visited them before; note that they do not have the arrow symbol characteristic of an external link.

Friendly notices

A contributor who sends friendly notices as a means of canvassing appropriately must ensure that these neutrally worded notifications are sent to a small number of editors, intending to improve rather than to influence a discussion and while avoiding excessive cross-posting.

In editing, a gloss is brief explanation that accompanies a text. It can also refer to the addition, modification, or deletion of hyperlinks like this one.

Godwin's Law

Godwin's Law is particularly concerned with logical fallacies such as reductio ad Hitlerum, wherein an idea is unduly dismissed or rejected on the ground of it being associated with persons generally considered "evil". Godwin's Law is: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." It is often cited as soon as it occurs as a flag that discussions have gone on too long or gotten out of hand on a particular topic.

Google test

Running sections or titles of articles through the Google search engine for various purposes. The four most common are to check for copyright violations, to determine which term among several is the most widely used, to decide whether a person is sufficiently notable to warrant an article and to check whether a questionable and obscure topic is real (as opposed to the idiosyncratic invention of a particular individual). See also Ghits.

An abbreviation for "I Am Not a Lawyer", indicating that an editor is about to give their opinion on a legal matter as they understand it, although they are not professionally qualified to do so, and may not fully understand the law in question. May be generalized to other fields, e.g., IANAA (administrator), IANAD (doctor).

A link to a sister project; this can be an interlanguage link to a corresponding article in a different language, or a link to a project such as Wikibooks, Meta, etc. The abbreviations iw or i/w are often used in edit summaries when an interwiki link has been added or changed.

Because websites change over time, many external links from a wiki to other sites cannot be guaranteed to remain active. When an article's links becomes outdated and no longer work, the article is said to have undergone link rot.

a symbol recognized by the MediaWiki software and which when seen in the non-commented text of the page, triggers the software to do something other than display that symbol, or transclude a page with that name, but instead to use the symbol directly.

Main Page

The page to which every user not specifying an article is redirected. Due to its high exposure, all content on the Main Page is automatically protected.

Mainspace

The main article namespace (i.e. not a talk page, not a "Project:" page, not a "User:" page, etc.)

Common edit summary used by many Wikimedians. Generally used for minor edits that no one is expected to care about. Also use (in edit summary or directly in talk page posts) in response to posts that the editor feels are uninteresting or pointless, or proposals not worth considering.

Merge

Taking the text of two pages, and turning it into a single page.

Meta

A separate wiki ([1]) used to discuss general Wikimedia matters. In the past, this has been called Metapedia, Meta Wikipedia, Meta Wikimedia, and many other combinations.

A minor edit is one that the contributor believes requires no review and could never be the subject of a dispute. An edit of this kind is marked in its page's revision history with a lower case, bolded "m" character (m).

Mop

A term used to refer to administrator duties (compare Janitor). Often seen in the phrase to give someone a mop (i.e., to make someone into an administrator).

Move

Changing the name and location of an article because of a misspelling, violation of naming convention, misnomer, or inaccuracy. Involves either renaming the page or moving it and constructing a redirect to keep the original link intact. See also Help:Moving a page.

A navbox is a type of template placed at the bottom articles to enable the reader to navigate easily to other articles on related topics. See also: Infobox, taxobox.

Newbie test, noob test, newb test

An edit made by a newcomer to Wikipedia, just to see if "Edit this page" really does what it sounds like. Newcomers should use Project:Sandbox for this purpose.

Null edit

A null edit is made when an editor opens the edit window of a document then re-saves the page without having made any text changes. This is sometimes done as a lazy way to purge – to update the functioning of templates (which require articles containing them to be edited in order for any changes to take effect). The term also applies to making a very small, non-substantive change (e.g., removing an unneeded blank line or adding one) in order to get the article history to register a change, for the purpose of leaving an edit summary that responds to a previous one.

In a discussion thread, refers to the topic/person/message which started the discussion. Depending on context, OP may stand for either "original post" (the message which started the thread), or "original poster" (the person who started the thread).

Any individual topic within a wiki; the web page without the top, bottom and sidebars. Pages include articles, stubs, redirects, disambiguation pages, user pages, talk pages, files, documentation and special pages.

Parameter

A template can appear differently at different pages, if a parameter is assigned a unique value in each template call. The parameter value may be a text that is substituted into the template, or a value that may control which action the template performs, much like an argument in a computer program function call. A parameter may be named or numbered. See Templates#Parameters.

Parent; Parent category

A larger, more general category of which the category under discussion is a subcategory. Compare Child. See also Help:Categorization.

Parent-only category

A category which only contains subcategories

Patent nonsense

A humorous pejorative applied to articles that are either completely unintelligible or totally irrelevant.

PD

Abbreviation for public domain, material not presently under copyright and thus available for use without permission.

Permalink, permanent link

A link to a specific version of a Wikipedia page, which will not reflect later edits to the page.

Personal attack

A comment that is not directed at content, but rather insults, demeans or threatens another editor (or a group of editors) personally, with obvious malice.

A rewritten and improved version of the Phase II software. It was eventually renamed to MediaWiki.

Phase IV

A dream proposal for the next generation of wiki software made back when complete rewrites were in vogue. Development is now focused on incremental progress. See also m:Wikipedia4.

Pipe, Piped link

A link where the text displayed in the article is not the name of the link target. Such links are created using the pipe character "|" e.g., Displayed text. The pipe trick is a software feature that generates the displayed text for the editor in certain circumstances. Piped links may also be used to sort pages in categories by other than their name, e.g., if [[Category:Foo|Bar]] is placed on an article, the article will be listed alphabetically at "Bar" in category "Foo", irrespective of its title.

Project namespace

The project namespace is a namespace dedicated to providing information about the wiki. Pages in the project namespace can always be accessed with the prefix "Project:".

Protected page

This term indicates a page that cannot be edited except by administrators, or in some cases, established users. Usually this is done to cool down an edit war.

A page title which, when requested, merely sends the reader to another page. This is used for synonyms and ease of linking.

Red link, redlink

A wikilink to an article that does not exist shows up red. See also blue link.

Render

In the context of the World Wide Web, rendering is the operation performed by the user's browser of converting the Web document (in HTML, XML, etc. plus image and other included files) into the visible page on the user's screen.

Repoint, re-point

To change the destination article of a redirect, either to avoid a double redirect or to change the redirect so that it leads to a more appropriate article. The term retarget is also frequently used.

Req

Abbreviation for "Request".

Rescope, re-scope

To change the subject matter of an article, a template or – most frequently – a category to one that is more acceptable for editorial or encyclopedic purposes. If by doing so the subject area is broadened, the term upscope is sometimes used.

Used in edit summaries to indicate that an editor has added a comment to support a proposal on a discussion page or process page where a consensus is being sought.

Sandbox

A sandbox is a page that users may edit however they want. Though it is meant to help users experiment and gain familiarity with Wiki markup, the public sandbox at Project:Sandbox is often filled with strange things and patent nonsense. In addition to the public sandbox, users may create private sandboxes on subpages of their user page.

Scap

A scap occurs when MediaWiki, the software that runs Wikipedia, is updated. Scap stands for "sync-common-all-php", the internal script used to deploy the update.

Using one of the '[edit]' links to the right of each section's title, one can get an edit window containing only the section of the page that's below the [edit] link. This makes it easier to find the exact spot where one wants to edit, and helps you avoid an edit conflict. You can turn section editing off in your preferences under the "Enable section editing via [edit] links" option.

A Wikilink contained in an article that points the reader to that same article, e.g., linking MediaWiki in the article "MediaWiki". Such links are automatically displayed as strongly emphasized text rather than links, but the more complex case of a link which redirects to the same article is not, and should be de-wikified.

Self-revert

A user self-reverts when he or she reverts or undoes an edit that he or she had previously made.

Sharpen cat

To place an article within a more specific category. In addition, sh cat in edit summaries.

Sheep vote

A vote that seems to be cast just to go along with the flow. This can typically be a vote such as "Support because x, y, and z are supporting." The opposite is called a wolf vote.

Skin

The appearance theme in Special:Preferences. Currently, these are available: Cologne Blue, Monobook, Modern and Vector.

A very short article or page that essentially points the reader in the direction of another page. Used in cases where a normal redirect is inappropriate for various reasons (e.g., it is a cross-wiki redirect).

Sort key

A device to make an article file alphabetically (in a category or other list of articles) other than by the article title, e.g., "John Smith" under "Smith, John", or "The Who" under "Who, The". Can be assigned to a specific category, or as a {{DEFAULTSORT:}}. See also Help:Category#Sort key.

sp

Short for spelling correction or space.

Split

Separating a single page into two or more pages.

Sprot, sprotect, sprotection

Short for semi-protect [ion]. Articles that are semi-protected cannot be edited by unregistered or newly registered users.

Steward

An Administrator who has been empowered to change any user's status on any Wikimedia Foundation project, including granting and revoking Administrator status and granting bureaucrat status.

Strike out, strike-through, strikethrough, etc.

To place text in strike-through (HTML <del>...</del>, <strike>...</strike>, or <s>...</s>) tags. This is very rarely used in articles, but is relatively common in votes and discussions when a contributor changes his or her opinion. As not to cause confusion, the outdated comments are struck out (like this). The inserted material (HTML <ins>) tag is sometimes used with it to show a replacement for the struck material (like this). Generally, one should strike out only one's own comments. Some editors prefer to simply remove or alter their updated material, though this is discouraged if others have responded to it and their responses would no longer make sense after the change. Note: Neither <strike> nor <s> will exist any longer in HTML 5/XHTML 2, so <del> is recommended.

Subarticle, sub-article

1. An article that has been split from an original, larger main article to keep the main article readable and to better develop the sub-topic of the split into a richer article in its own right. Contrast subpage.

2. A page in multi-page list that was split to reduce list article size.

Subpage, sub-page

A page connected to a parent page, such as Somepage/Arguments. You can only create subpages in certain namespaces. Do not use subpages in the main article space. Contrast subarticle.

Short for "substituting" a template, which permanently copies its contents and breaks the link with the source template page. Contrast transclusion, a live updated reference to the source template page.

A type of template, usually placed at the foot of an article, linking to articles on the immediate predecessors of and successors to the subject of the article. Thus, for example, an article on the tenth president of Foo would be linked by succession box to articles on the ninth and eleventh presidents. Compare Infobox.

SUL

Abbreviation for "Single user login", which refers to the process of unifying individual accounts with the same name across Wikimedia projects into one global account.

System administrator, SysAdmin, sysadmin

A web developer responsible for installation and maintenance of the wiki engine and the container web server of a third-party wiki installation. Generally also acts as an administrator on the wiki. See also Administrator.

A MediaWiki tag, brief message applied next to certain revisions by the software

Talk page

A page reserved for discussion of the page with which it is associated, such as the article page. Very confusingly, the link to a talk page is labelled "discussion". All pages within Wikipedia (except pages in the Special namespace, and talk pages themselves!) have talk pages attached to them.

Template

A way of automatically including the contents of one page within another page, used for boilerplate text, navigational aids, etc.

Templatise, Templatize

To delete a list or category and turn the contents into a template, usually either a navbox or infobox. Sometimes used in CFD discussions as shorthand for saying that "this group of articles would be better if presented in template form rather than as a category." See also: listify.

Wikis that are running the MediaWiki software, but are not a Wikimedia Foundation project. This applies to public and private wikis operated by community projects, corporations, nonprofits. social movements, etc.[1]

Thread

A talk page discussion, usually with more than 2 indented replies. May refer to either a complete second level section (i.e. a section with heading surrounded by ==) of posts as is defined by talk page archiving bots. For this type of thread, the age is the time interval from the most recent post to current time. It can also refer to an individual sequence of indented paragraphs.

Tl

Short for "template". Also the name of a specific template, {{tl}}, which provides a template link, i.e., links a page to a template without allowing the template's code to operate on that page.

TOC, ToC

An article (or other page)'s table of contents, which lists the subsection headings within the page. This is usually close to the top left of the page, but may be placed at the top right, floated, or omitted entirely.

top

On a user's list of contributions, (top) indicates that the article has not been edited by anyone else since the user last edited it.

Transclusion

Transclusion is the inclusion of the content of a document into another document by reference. It is typically the use of the template functionality of MediaWiki to include the same content in multiple documents without having to edit those documents separately.

A user who incites or engages in disruptive behavior (trolling). There are some people who enjoy causing conflict, and there are those who make a hobby of it. However, these are few in number and one should always assume good faith in other users. Calling someone a troll in a dispute is a bad idea; it has an effect similar to calling someone a Nazi – no further meaningful debate is likely to occur. See also m:What is a troll?

A small box which is stored in the template space, and which includes a small piece of information about a user (such as "This user likes cheese"). Many users use userboxes on their user page, although some look down upon it.

User page

A personal page for wiki users. Most people use their pages to introduce themselves and to keep various personal notes and lists. They are also used by user to communicate with each other via the user talk pages. The process of Registration does not generate user pages automatically. A user page is linked to as [[User:SomeUserNameHere|SomeUserNameHere]] and appears as SomeUserNameHere.

An unusually long paragraph, presenting a solid block of text of a dozen or more lines. Walls of text are visually unappealing and difficult to read. A wall of text in an article may simply be a sign of an inexperienced editor unfamiliar with Wikipedia markup, or may be a sign of a more serious issue such as copy-and-paste copyright violation. A wall of text in a talk page may be taken to be a sign of soapboxing or shotgun argumentation.

Watchlist

A set of pages selected by the user, who can then click on My watchlist to see recent changes to those pages. See also: Help:Watchlist.

Weasel words

Phrases such as "Some say that..." or "It has been argued..." that introduce a point of view without attributing it more specifically.

To format using Wiki markup (as opposed to plain text or HTML). It commonly refers to adding internal links to material (Wikilinks) but is not limited to just that. To wikify an article could refer to applying any form of wiki-markup, such as standard headings and layout, including the addition of infoboxes and other templates, or bolding/italicizing of text. Noun: wikification; gerund: wikifying.

A general spirit of collegiality and mutual understanding among wiki users.

Wiki markup, wikitext, wiki text, wiki-text, etc.

Code like HTML, but simplified and more convenient, for example '''boldfaced text''' instead of <B>boldfaced text</B>. It is the source code stored in the database and shown in the edit box. Searching by MediaWiki is done in the wikitext, as opposed to searching by external major search engines, which is done in the resulting HTML. The size of a page is the size of the wikitext.

Wikimedia

Properly Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (WMF), a non-profit organization that provides a legal, financial, and organizational framework for Wikipedia and its sister projects and provides the necessary hardware. Contrast MediaWiki.

Wikimedian

Wikimedians are users of any Wikimedia project and members of the Wikimedia movement. See also:Wikimedians

One of the personifications of Wikipedia. She is the mascot character of various WikiProjects.

WikiProject

An active group of wiki users working together to improve a specific group of articles, usually those on one or more related topics. This often involves an attempt to standardize the content and style of the articles using an agreed standard format.

A Wikimedia Foundation project. It is a wiki-based, species directory that provides a solution to the problem that there is no central registration of species data in Wikipedia. Wikispecies will provide a central, more extensive database for taxonomy. Wikispecies is aimed at the needs of scientific users rather than general users.

Wikistress, Wiki-Stress, wiki-stress, etc.

Personal stress or tension induced by editing wikis, or more often by being involved in minor conflict with another user.

WikiTerrorism, wikiterrorism, WikiTerror, wikiterror

A melodramatic term for the act of purposely trying to damage a wiki on a large scale. It can be vandalism, but it could include trolling, edit warring, or anything that could disrupt the wiki on a large scale. WikiTerrorism could also be "blitzing" a wiki, or vandalizing several articles in rapid succession. Some may consider this term in bad taste or hyperbolic.